ABSTRACT

In the last fifteen years, high schoolers became key actors in the Chilean political landscape, as members of anti-neoliberal and feminist social movements. Although social researchers have paid increasing attention to them, few have analyzed how these young people relate to and make use of history in the context of their political struggles. Combining an ethnographic and a microhistorical approach, this article examines a Chilean public high school and a particular and widespread historical narrative about it. I argue that the different ways in which this narrative was invoked, transmitted and contested in a context of massive student protests – and the pedagogical devices and practices of cooperation and conflict used to do so – allowed the students of this school not only to use history in favor of their political agendas, but to participate in the continual production of a political field in which the borders of their historical community and who could be considered members of it were being disputed. In doing this, the article illuminates some of the complicated interactions between historical consciousness, political action and citizenship in modern societies, as well as illustrates the usefulness of combining an historical and an ethnographic lens to visualize the nuances and tensions existing when human beings make use of history. Further, it sheds light on the concept of historical consciousness itself, illustrating how historians and other social researchers can operationalize it to better comprehend how human beings relate with the past, but also the present and the future.

摘要

在过去的 15 年里，高中生成为智利政坛的关键人物，成为反新自由主义和女权主义社会运动的成员。尽管社会研究人员越来越关注他们，但很少有人分析这些年轻人在他们的政治斗争背景下如何与历史相关并如何利用历史。结合民族志和微观历史的方法，本文考察了智利的一所公立高中以及关于它的特殊而广泛的历史叙述。我认为，在大规模学生抗议的背景下，这种叙述被援引、传播和质疑的不同方式——以及用于合作和冲突的教学手段和实践——让这所学校的学生不仅可以使用历史支持他们的政治议程，但是要参与政治领域的持续生产，在这个领域中，他们的历史共同体的边界以及谁可以被视为其中的成员存在争议。在此过程中，本文阐明了现代社会中历史意识、政治行动和公民身份之间的一些复杂相互作用，并说明了结合历史和民族志镜头以形象化人类使用时存在的细微差别和紧张关系的用处。的历史。此外，它阐明了历史意识本身的概念，说明了历史学家和其他社会研究人员如何运用它来更好地理解人类与过去、现在和未来的关系。